Long, Long Ago

Alexander Woollcott

Description

Long, Long Ago is a collection of Woollcott’s writings in the style of While Rome Burns. It is a bird’s eye view of the people, the institutions, the facts and fancies of an unforgettable bygone era. As a famous critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine, he tells true anecdotes about the famous people he came into contact with. Indeed, as one of New York's most prolific literary and drama critics, Woollcott was an owlish character whose caustic wit either joyously attracted or vehemently repelled the artistic communities of 1920s Manhattan, but always delighted readers.

Sujets

• Drama
• Literary Criticism

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774643426
• Langue: English

Extrait

Long Long Ago
by Alexander Woollcott

First published in 1943
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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Long, Long Ago



by
Alexander Woollcott

Friends and Neighbors
How a great jurist spoke out of
turn and calamity was forestalled
for a year.
Friends and Neighbors: I

“GET DOWN, YOU FOOL!”
OT a few, I think, would be of the opinion that thestrongly contrasted figures of Abraham Lincoln andthe second Oliver Wendell Holmes were the twomost creditable and encouraging embodiments which it hasbeen the portion of the human spirit to experience in thiscountry. Those holding that opinion would learn with thegreater interest that once, in a unique and fateful moment ofAmerican history, those two met—the one a handsome toweringlad in his early twenties, the other with less than a yearof his course still to run—met and had salty and characteristicwords with each other.
In vain you will search the Library of Congress for anyrecord of that colloquy, and the only life of Justice Holmesthen written—an extremely unauthorized biography by SilasBent published in 1932—was the work of a man who appearsnot to have known that the meeting ever took place. I havereasons, however, for believing that it did and submit thosereasons here as a memorandum for the convenience of thedesignated chroniclers now at work on that definitive biographyof the great judge for which, with such patience as wecan muster, the world is waiting.
The story came to me from Professor Harold J. Laski ofthe London School of Economics and Political Science. Of hisexceptional qualifications as a witness in any matter relatingto Justice Holmes, I need say no more than that, among theletters which have been turned over to the aforesaid biographers,there are close to six hundred which Professor Laskihad received from the Judge during the eighteen years oftheir friendship. Wherefore at a luncheon given for Laski afew years ago in New York (and in spite of Hendrik VanLoon, who was bursting with other topics) some of us guilefullyled the talk to the subject of Justice Holmes and wererewarded by many stories about him. At least three of thesebelong, to my notion, in the schoolbooks.
Well, one of those stories concerns an annual pilgrimagewhich the Judge used to make to Arlington—that bivouacacross the Potomac where (having shyly entrusted Justice VanDevanter with the task of wangling the privilege for him)Holmes himself now lies buried. On September 13, in eachyear of the years he spent in Washington, he used to takeflowers to Arlington because that was the birthday of GeneralSedgwick—Major General John Sedgwick, who, until hewas killed in action at Spotsylvania, commanded the divisionin which Holmes’s own 20th Massachusetts fought some ofits bloodiest battles. No private of the Civil War could havepublished his memoirs under the morose title Generals Diein Bed .
Now on several of these memorial occasions Laski playedescort, and once, by way of prodding a little war reminiscenceout of the old veteran, he asked a few such primaryquestions as must have reminded his companion that herewas an Englishman with only the most languid and meagerinterest in American military history. Had the rebels evercome dangerously close to Washington? They had? Well,well. How close? Where were they? From the heights of Arlingtonthe Justice was able to gesture with his stick towardthe point of the attack on Fort Stevens.
Then he laughed. “Where were they?” he repeated reminiscently.“You know, the last person who asked me that questionwas Mr. Lincoln.” And he told of a day long past when,Lincoln having come out from the White House to inspectthe defenses, the task of piloting him had fallen to Holmes.Lincoln too wanted to know just where the enemy were, andHolmes pointed them out. The President stood up to look.Now, when standing up and supplemented by his high plughat, Mr. Lincoln was a target of exceptional visibility. Fromthe rebel marksmen came a snarl of musketry fire. Grabbingthe President by the arm, the young officer dragged himunder cover, and afterwards, in wave upon wave of hot misgiving,was unable to forget that in doing so he had said,“Get down, you fool!”
Admittedly this was not the approved style for an officerto employ in addressing the Commander in Chief of thearmed forces of his country. The youthful aide was the morerelieved when, just as Lincoln was quitting the fort, he tookthe trouble to walk back. “Good-by, Colonel Holmes,” hesaid. “I’m glad to see you know how to talk to a civilian.”
Well, there was the story. I heard it with something likestupefaction. Hard to believe? Very. But—and this is a rarerexperience—not so easy to disbelieve, either. I soon dismissedas untenable the convenient idea that Laski had invented it.Anyone who, as a reporter, as a lawyer, or even as a juror,has had any considerable practice in estimating the veracityof testimony would recognize Laski as a witness of almostphonographic fidelity.
The Justice himself, then. Had he been yarning? Or evenstretching the truth a bit? Would he have been one—even asyou and I—to report as his own an experience of someoneelse? You know, just to make it sound more authentic. No,not Mr. Justice Holmes. No one could for a moment acceptthat explanation—no one, that is, at all familiar with theworkings of his mind, as that mind was opened to us in hislegal opinions, in his chary and fastidious speeches, and aboveall in his letters to young Mr. Wu, which, having recentlycome to unsanctioned light in Shanghai, are only a whettingappetizer for the great feast that will nourish us when all ofthe Holmes correspondence is published.
No, I found it unbelievable that either Laski or Holmeshad fabricated the story. Then how, in the name of all that’sprobable, could we be hearing it for the first time after morethan seventy years? True, the only Holmes biography in printthen was written with less than the decent minimum of co-operationfrom its subject. But one would think that evenan ill-equipped and hurried biographer could hardly haveoverlooked so salient an episode—if it were true.
If it were true! The startled Laski, subjected at once to astern and skeptical cross-examination, could yield no corroborativedetail. He had told all he knew. Suspended in timeand space—like a lighted pumpkin on Hallowe’en—his testimonyhad all the innocence of a child’s. He didn’t know inwhat chapter of the Civil War it was supposed to fit, didn’teven know the story had not long been a part of Americanfolklore. The task of vetting it must fall to others.
Now such a meeting as Laski described could have occurred,if at all, only during the sweltering hours of Early’sraid. That swift and desperate lunge at the capital was madein July ’64, at a time when Lee was besieged in Richmondand Sherman was on his way to Atlanta. Present and unaccountedfor, however, were 12,000 rebel troops held inleash in the Shenandoah Valley under the erratic commandof Lee’s “bad old man”—Jubal Early. What better could theydo than try to catch Washington off guard?
Only a feint? Perhaps. But there was always the wildchance that they could achieve demoralization by actuallytaking the city. Certainly they were encouraged by the notunreasonable hope of finding its defenses manned only bycivilians or, at best, by convalescent soldiers from the Washingtonhospitals.
But in the nick of time Grant (in addition to hurrying the19th Corps, then homing by transport from Louisiana) detachedthe 6th Corps from the siege of Richmond and sentit to the rescue by water. The old-timers of that corpsswarmed down the gangplanks even as Early’s men, who hadbeen helpfully delayed by Lew Wallace at the Monocacy,were swinging along through the choking dust of the SeventhStreet Pike.
Thus it befell that, when Early was in position to open fire,the reply came from parapets manned not by clerks and cripplesbut by veterans in fine fettle. So that was that. He departedwith all convenient speed. True, he was only half-heartedlypursued. But a few weeks down the road, CedarCreek was waiting for him—and a man on horseback namedPhil Sheridan.
Of course Lincoln would have been up to his neck in theEarly raid—and was. As the re-enforcements came up thePotomac he was down on the wharves to welcome them—suchreassuringly seasoned soldiers—as they piled off the steamboats.You can picture them milling around him in the midsummersunshine as clearly as if you were seeing it all in awoodcut in an old Harper’s Weekly . Then of course he visitedthe defenses, and equally of course it was promptly reported(and later sanctified by Nicolay and Hay) that he hadto be warned not to expose himself to the enemy fire. This isalways said when distinguished noncombatants come withinearshot of guns fired in anger. I have even known a war correspondentto report it of himself. By cable. Collect. My story,then, is in the great tradition—and plausible enough so longas you leave Holmes put of it.
That indeed was the oppressive burden of the reports Igot back from the two specialists to whom I first took it forproper confirmation. One of these was Lieutenant ColonelJohn W. Thomason, Jr., U. S. M. C., a marine who not onlycan read and write but, as if that were not disquieting enough,can draw as well. My second expert was Lloyd Lewis, biographerof Sherman, who for years has spent so much of hisspare time poring over unedited docu